The distinguished Russian scholar Orlando Figes today revealed that his Russian publisher had cancelled a contract to publish his latest book on life under Stalin, saying it had apparently dumped the project because of "political pressure".

Figes said he had received a curt note from the publisher, Atticus, saying it no longer wanted to publish The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia, his book about Soviet-era repression. The company said it was shelving plans to publish a Russian translation of the work due to "the present economic situation".

Figes, professor of history at London University's Birkbeck College, said he strongly suspected the real reason for scrapping a Russian edition was political.

Kremlin ideologists are attempting to rehabilitate Stalin and to portray him in textbooks and classrooms not as a tyrant but as a great, if flawed, national hero.

The Atticus decision comes after a raid by police in St Petersburg in early December on the offices of the human rights organisation Memorial. Armed men confiscated the organisation's entire archive, which was used by Figes in his book, and included numerous interviews with victims of Stalin's gulags, as well as memoirs, photographs and other documents.

Figes said he was sceptical of the apparent explanation for his book's non-appearance in Russia. He told the Guardian: "The raid on Memorial is part of a broader ideological struggle for control of history publications and teaching in Russia that may have influenced the decision of my Russian publisher to cancel its contract for The Whisperers."

Asked why the Kremlin might seek to ban his work, he said: "Obviously if you marginalise in national memory the history of repression, people have less reason to resist the return of authoritarian rule. It reinforces the idea that Russia should take pride in its authoritarian traditions and that it is special and different from the west."

Figes said Vladimir Putin, Russia's prime minister, had acknowledged Stalin's 1937-38 Great Terror, in which thousands were shot, as 'terrible'. But he said there were concerted official attempts to balance Stalin's repression with more "positive things", with the dictator credited for winning the second world war against the Nazis and building up a modern Soviet Union.

The historian - who is the author of a major work on the Russian revolution, A People's Tragedy, as well as other books - said his latest work was being translated into 22 languages. It is due to be published in every single language of the former Soviet Union except, it now seems, Russian.

Atticus refused to comment on claims it had dumped the book under Kremlin pressure. It said: "Unfortunately we've made not an easy decision to decline this project. It is due to the present economic situation."

The publisher apologised for any inconvenience and said it hoped "this wonderful book" would be launched in Russia one day.

Figes said his publisher had initially seemed very keen to publish, signing a contract in November. Subsequently, however, two of the Kremlin's leading ideologists - Gleb Pavlovksy and Pavel Danilin - published a vicious attack on Memorial. They argued that foreign scholars should not be allowed to intervene in Russian history or wreck its "glorious memory".

Memorial is Russia's oldest and best-known human rights organisation. It has pioneered research into Soviet-era repression and collaborated with Figes on The Whisperers, published in Britain in 2007. It interviewed dozens of elderly survivors of Stalinism and recorded their personal accounts of life under tyranny.

The Whisperers includes gripping testimonies of ordinary Russians who were children in the 1930s. It details their cramped living conditions, the ubiquitous fear of informers and the abrupt disappearance of parents, many of whom never returned from Stalin's camps.

"We were brought up to keep our mouths shut. We went through life afraid to talk," one woman, whose father was arrested in 1936, told the historian. "Our mother used to say that every other person was an informer. We were afraid of our neighbours, and especially of the police. Even today, if I see a policeman I shake with fear."

The book recounts improbable tales of survival. In many cases, the children of arrested parents were split up and sent to different orphanages. Some grandparents tracked their grandchildren down but others failed.

Children of "enemies of the people" developed strategies for survival, the book says, lying about their parents' arrest and inventing fake biographies. Others wrote faithfully to their parents in camps - only to discover on their return that they were unable to get along with each other.

Figes estimates that between 1928, when Stalin seized control of the Communist party, and his death in 1953, the dictator repressed at least 25 million people - an eighth of the Soviet Union's entire population. His victims were executed, sent to gulags, deported or forced to work as slave labourers.

During a meeting with schoolteachers in 2007, Putin acknowledged that Russia had had some "problematic pages" in its turbulent history. "But what state hasn't?" he said.

Citing the US bombing of Vietnam, he said: "All sorts of things happen in the history of every state. And we cannot allow ourselves to be saddled with guilt."